Every now and then, I take "throwaway" pictures that turn out to be among my favorites. This scene of Waterville Valley, NH, which was taken from a cross-country ski trail in February, 2005, is one such shot; I just happened to be finishing up my skiing for the day when I came to this outlook along one of the lower trails near the village. I took a very quick black and white photo (it was cold out), put my camera away and my gloves back on, and forgot about the picture, until I looked at it a day or two later. It is tough not to take a good picture in scenic Waterville Valley, but this one was purely an accident.For a larger version of this photo, go to the Waterville Valley, NH photo on the Travel Guide of America site.
Bodega Bay is one of those spots where the Northern California coast becomes really wild and rugged. A tiny town located between San Francisco and Mendecino, Bodega Bay is one of my personal favorite spots along the entire coast of California. This picture was taken from Route 1 on a chilly November day in 2004, and shows the sheer power of the ocean in this part of the state. 
Vermont has some attractive villages, but few are as nice as Grafton, VT. The entire village looks like a museum piece, but it's a real, working town. Its riverside location in a deeply wooded valley seemingly in the middle of nowhere just adds to the mystique of the place. The photo here, which was taken in the late 1980s, gives just a taste of the charm of this stunningly beautiful village.
Sometimes the most interesting scenes can be found in the most unlikely of spots. This photo, which was taken in January 2009 while on a snowshoe hike at the AMC Ponkapoag Camp south of Boston, shows a section of Randolph that many people don't know about. Randolph is a community south of Boston that is mostly residential and commercial, and is probably not seen as a place of scenic beauty. But some of the Boston area's most remote--and scenic--areas can be found in the Randolph section of the Blue Hills, as can be seen here. 
Some say that Mount Katahdin in Northern Maine is the one place in New England that has a distinctly western feel to it. From the bottom especially, the broad, massive mountain with its series of summits looks like something you might see in Montana or Wyoming. This photo, which was taken in the late 1980s, gives a view of the Knife Edge from the true summit of the mountain. There is a trail along the Knife Edge (which I took partway) that has dizzying views 2,000 feet below from either side of it.
For all the bad press that Washington, DC, gets as a corrupt, crime-ridden city, it really is a beautiful place in many areas. The northwest quadrant of the city is particularly attractive, with tree-shaded streets and parks found in neighborhoods such as Georgetown, Kalorama, and Dupont Circle. This photo, which was taken near Dupont Circle in April of 2006, shows a section of Massachusetts Avenue called Embassy Row, which has a large number of mansions and lies within one of the wealthiest parts of Washington.
Thendara, NY, is a tiny hamlet located next to Old Forge (a popular resort town) in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. The photo shown here, which was taken in August of 2006, shows a spectacular sunset that caused driver to pull over and take pictures along the Moose River, which forms the border of Old Forge and Thendara. I used both color and black and white in taking pictures of the sunset, but the black and white ones actually came out more interesting, as the contrast of light and dark was quite striking.